XCON: MTA Can Stop After Generating an Event ID 9405

ID: Q197281

The information in this article applies to:

Microsoft Exchange Server, version 5.5 SP1

SYMPTOMS

The Exchange Server message transfer agent (MTA) may generate an event with the following text:

Source: MSExchangeMTA
Event ID: 9405
Description: An unexpected error has occurred which may cause the MTA to terminate. Error: ExchHeapFree failure 87. [BASE DISP:FANOUT 12] (16)

These events are sometimes associated with the MTA when it appears to stop processing messages, and you must stop the service from Task Manager and restart it to resume message flow. The Calls.out file may indicate that the Process Heap status entry, Heap 0x01070000, owned by MTA routine 142, is invalid.

CAUSE

The MTA can encounter problems if it is configured to generate content encoding for a size of 2 KB, which is turned on when the heuristics bit is set. This setting is used to accommodate other X.400 MTAs that are unable to handle content encoded to larger sizes. The heuristics bit for 2 KkB-encoding is 256.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Exchange Server version 5.5. For more information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Q191014 XGEN: How to Obtain the Latest Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack

The English version of this fix should have the following file attributes or later:

Component: Message Transfer Agent (MTA)


   File Name      Version
   -------------------------
   Dbserver.sch   5.5.2441.0
   Dcprods.cat    5.5.2441.0
   Ems_rid.dll    5.5.2441.0
   Emsmta.exe     5.5.2441.0
   Info4log.cfg   5.5.2441.0
   Infodlog.cfg   5.5.2441.0
   Infollog.cfg   5.5.2441.0
   Infotlog.cfg   5.5.2441.0
   Mtacheck.exe   5.5.2441.0
   Mtamsg.dll     5.5.2441.0
   P2.xv2         5.5.2441.0
   X400om.dll     5.5.2441.0
   X400omv1.dll   5.5.2441.0

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed this to be a problem in Microsoft Exchange Server version 5.5 Service Pack 1. This problem was first corrected in Exchange Server 5.5 Service Pack 2.

Additional query words:

Keywords : exc55sp2fix
Version : winnt:5.5 SP1
Platform : winnt
Issue type : kbbug